So I very recently saw one of the PBS oldies that featured Peter, Paul, and Mary. It’s easy to forget that they were great at singing pleasing melodies with murky lyrics. It was certainly a pleasure to hear ”Puff, the Magic Dragon,” while wondering just a bit about those words. What’s that song all about?

Well, “Trump, the magic dragon” works just as well. What’s his song all about?

Pete below is right that part of stage 2 is going from underestimating to overestimating Trump. That’s true of many of his supporters, who think of him as the savior of our country. The one who can deliver us from the evil wrought by the false promises and destructive deeds of another man who claimed to be our savior – Obama, citizen of the world. Having been burned by one “savior,” you would think, we wouldn’t be longing for another.

Well, not only that: Some distinguished scholars of classical philosophy are starting to think of Trump as something like a Roman emperor or a Greek hero. When the republic tanks, what do you need? I’ve followed a fascinating and highly erudite discussion on Facebook between a man from the University of Dallas and another from Thomas Aquinas College on whether Trump is more like Achilles or Alcibiades. One benefit of studying Greek and Roman philosophy and literature is that you’re able to weigh in on that important controversy.

My own view is that these guys are seeing, in Trump, more than is really there. What have they been smokin’? But the same goes for the Trump haters. He’s called in the WSJ America’s Hugo Chávez! Give me a bleepin’ break.

One point of the pretty song is that magic dragons don’t really exist, except for little boys and users of recreational drugs. Well, and maybe students of Greek and Roman philosophy, who, as Tocqueville predicted, long for a kind of greatness that bourgeois democracy just can’t provide.

Anyway, I wrote an essay playing with Rubio’s ridiculous thought that a major outrage in our country is kids borrowing big bucks to study Greek philosophy. I tried to connect it to Walker’s more plodding know-nothingism.

Some Straussian student wrote me that Rubio’s strange choice of the specific phrase “Greek philosophy” is pretty curious. He must have an esoteric teaching that actually endorses its study, if not by everyone.

If that’s true, I responded, I’ll vote for him esoterically, with a secret ballot.

Yuval has an article at the Corner that gives a more comprehensive and sympathetic view of Rubio and liberal education. I agree with the emphasis on preserving moral and intellectual diversity, and so on fending off the accreditors and other monopolists. Having said that, I’m not about to concede that most of our colleges and universities should be about skills acquisition and little more more. And I probably trust in the market somewhat less as the solution to everything that ails higher education in our country. It’s pretty much market-based decision-making, after all, that causes our private colleges to be all about the flashy amenities and less and less about intellectual substance.

Finally, I’ve written my own stage-2 article for The Federalist on what we can learn from what the surging Trump and Sanders share in common.